


Sunbeam

by kaboomslang



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Blindness, Chirrut POV, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9559322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaboomslang/pseuds/kaboomslang
Summary: In a world with only light and dark, how are you supposed to see anyone's true colours? If you're Chirrut, you ask. Snapshots of their progressing relationship.





	

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK, OK, so i was meant to write porn but i started a drabble for tumblr and this just took off. thank you to [GreyMichaela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyMichaela/pseuds/GreyMichaela) and [iwritesometimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritesometimes) for reading it over! also i just wanted to thank everyone for the incredible response to my other fics, i didn't expect much at all and it's been amazing. anyway, enjoy

Colour must be riotous. He doesn't understand it, can't comprehend it in any way when all he's ever seen is light and the absence of it. 

(This makes it easy for him to sleep in the dark with his eyes open. Though after one too many instances of Baze clutching him close in the wake of a nightmare, choking about seeing Chirrut lifeless in the sand with his staring eyes, he makes an effort to close them.) 

It's his understanding that everything in the world is a different colour, but that some wildly different things are coloured the same. His teachers try to explain it through the senses he knows better than his sighted friends. The sweep of robes across flagstones is the same sound as the wind in the trees, but they are not the same thing. Touching kyber shards feels like drinking from the coolest oasis. They tell him about oceans, and how they're the same colour as the sky. How fortunate they are to live in a desert, Chirrut thinks, for surely he would be the only one who knew which way was up.

During the marketplace’s most bustling hours though, the sounds, the smells, the swell of the crowds knocking into him can be overwhelming. How can they cope with seeing it too? If every one of these things looks different from the other? It must feel like drowning.

Someone told him once that red was an angry colour, that blood and viscera and explosions were red. He knows humans ‘turn red’ when they’re angry, though he doesn’t know how.  _ Seeing red, _ they say,  _ he saw red. _ It worries him, because —

 

“What colour is it?” he asks. Warmth is leaving him and the void before him is dimming, because the sun sinks into the earth at the end of the day, he knows that much. Their legs dangle off the rough lip of the mesa. “What do you see?”

Baze is quiet, because he takes his time in trying to explain the answer to this frequent question in a way Chirrut will understand. It isn’t always easy. “It’s red. It’s all red, I don’t know how to explain it any other way, I’m sorry. All the rock on Jedha is red, and the sunset...”

His stomach lurches at the implication. Destruction, hurt, anger — he’d thought this was a peaceful place, that’s why he had brought Baze here.

“It’s beautiful,” Baze sighs. “Thank you, Chirrut.”

 

He doesn’t understand.

 

“I found this growing in the courtyard! With the rains being late this cycle, I didn’t think anything could grow on the whole damn moon.” Meditating under the dry trees had begat more profit than inner peace, for when he’d pushed himself up from his careful position, his hands had brushed a single, lonely flower. He had instantly known what he wanted to do with it.

“Let me put it in your hair.” Baze’s braids almost reach to his chin now, and Chirrut knows this is something people do with flowers. “That’s supposed to look nice, right?”

The constant shuffling belies Baze’s discomfort. He mumbles, “Why do you want me to look nice?”

“Well,” Chirrut begins, but comes up empty. Clearly Baze takes care of himself, for Chirrut can’t help but overhear the admiring giggles that trail them through the temple. He traces the petals’ edges, and thinks about who gives people flowers. Lovers. Spouses. “I just thought you might like it, that’s all. What colour is it?”

The silence that follows isn’t silent, because he can hear his own heart thumping in his throat. 

“It’s red. Rich and dark, like how the monk’s red sorghum tastes in the autumn,” Baze says quietly, and Chirrut recoils. He never wanted Baze to think — is it offensive? The flower isn’t a gift of anger. His hand drops almost as fast as his heart, but Baze grabs at him, fumbling in a way he never is. Baze is solid and dependable and Chirrut can always locate him in a crowd. Bigger, more important things always draw the smaller into their orbit, after all.

“Chirrut wait, no. It’s beautiful, it is. Thank you. You can put it in my hair, i-if you want.”

Chirrut feels something in his chest like hiccups, unable to rid himself of them. 

 

He doesn’t understand this either.

 

“Did you know Baze goes  _ so _ red whenever you talk to him?” says Uqin, who’s still just an even match for Chirrut, despite her two extra arms. If she says it to throw his concentration she succeeds with merit, because he freezes in place, leaden weight rooting him to the spot. She kicks at the back of his knees and bears him down to the dirt with ease, but suddenly it isn’t important.

“He — what? What do you mean?” People see red when they’re angry, wave red rags at hulking bantha bulls to set them charging. Is Baze really so enraged with him, even under his gentle tone and carefully chosen words?

“He turns red, his whole face, right down his neck. The funniest thing is his ears, you wouldn’t think they could get any more noticeable, but then you clap him on the shoulder or something and they light up like landing beacons,” Uqin laughs. “It’s cute.”

“But what does that mean?” he begs, and the needy crack in his voice slices her laughter short.

“It means… well, you know. It usually means the person likes you. As more than a friend?” The expression on his face is a new one, to him. Uqin eases her weight off him. “I thought you knew, sorry Chirrut. I shouldn’t have teased you.”

Chirrut tries his breathing techniques for a while, after Uqin has left to likely gloat about besting him. Even though she cheated.

His head is spinning, and not just because of his embarrassing defeat. How can red mean guts and anger, cute and beautiful, sunsets and drink and the warmth he felt when people complimented the flower in Baze’s hair? He’s in the dark against his will already, he doesn’t need anyone, least of all Baze, keeping him there. 

They aren’t alone when Chirrut finds him in their dormitory, low conversation and the hum of generators keep them company, but Baze isn’t actually speaking with anyone.

“Baze?”

“I’m here, Chirrut. By the window.”

The end of his staff scrapes in wide arcs towards his goal, scrapes like Baze’s teeth grinding and the gnawing of hunger, and the smell of the mines. Chirrut thinks about how, maybe, red could mean different things for them.

“Where have you been?” Baze asks, reaching out to draw Chirrut closer, make him sit with Baze on the wide stone window ledge. His strong hand is so gentle around Chirrut’s wrist that suddenly he can’t take it, the not knowing what they have, because there’s no way this feels like anger.

“Are you red right now?”

The hand on his arm tightens hard before dropping, like Chirrut is red-hot and Baze can’t stand to touch him.

Light flickers in slow waves across across his vision, the sky is dark outside and the braziers are lit, but there’s something else now. A glowing, not visible but felt, and emitting light just the same. The way dreams can convince the mind of knowing something all along, without ever having seen it happen. He knows it’s Baze.

Finally Baze croaks, “What?”

“Are you red? Is your face red? Uqin said that people’s faces turn red when they’re talking to someone they like, and that yours does when — when you’re talking to me. And I don’t know if it’s different for everyone, or just for boys, or if it’s another thing everyone just knows if they’re not blind and I’ve been too dense to pick up on,” he chokes on a small, hysterical laugh because he’s running out of air and Baze isn’t saying anything. The glowing is getting brighter. Maybe this is what it’s like for them to drown in the rainbows of the marketplace. 

“I’m right, aren’t I? Can I touch your face?” It seems appropriate to ask, this time.

“Yes,” Baze whispers. “Yes to both.”

“Thank the Force,” Chirrut says, and tucks his shaking fingers behind Baze’s burning ears he knows are red. His hair is long now, cascading over his newly broadened shoulders, and Chirrut thinks of a flower, with overjoyed tears prickling his eyes. Sweeping his thumbs over Baze’s flaming cheeks sets him alight and Chirrut kisses him hard as he can, the glowing turning to starbursts in front of his very eyes, a red giant in supernova. 

 

He’s beginning to understand.

 

It isn’t the first battle they’ve fought, and it won’t be the last. Chirrut doesn’t really have the time to be sitting around and staring past the glowing web, truly into space beyond. Re-enforcements will be streaking towards them in minutes, but Baze is still searching through the fallen aliens with heavy grunts and enthusiastic curses. Hijacking the enemy’s sole mech unit hadn’t worked as well as they had hoped, but the smoking ruins of the base were far enough away up the mountainside that the fire wouldn’t reach them. Not yet. Crackling flames reminded Chirrut of sparring, the rapid crash of wooden staffs together. He thinks of the sweet nuts Baze likes to crack open and eat in the temple gardens with his head in Chirrut’s lap, whenever he can get them. That flames and destruction should remind him of such a memory strikes him as hilarious, suddenly.

Baze is carrying something bulky towards him, Chirrut can hear the burdened drag of his steps.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. I was thinking about your nuts.” Chirrut smiles and leans forward on his staff, tilting his head towards the strengthening glow of Baze, brighter, redder than the sun.

Baze _tchs_ his tongue. “Not the time, Chirrut. See what I’ve got.” He takes Chirrut’s hand and runs it over a warm metal  _ something _ , an odd shape. “It’s a chestplate, and I can fix the ammo drum to the back of it. Now I just have to lug the repeater around. And before you ask, it’s red.”

Twisting their fingers together, Chirrut pulls Baze to stand between his legs, rubbing his forehead against the rough scratch of his jumpsuited stomach. “Are you alright, my heart? Tell me the truth, you know I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Then why do you even need to ask?” Baze says softly, stroking his free hand over Chirrut’s throbbing head.

Digging his fingers high up into Baze’s thigh just below his ass, earning him a reluctantly hungry little noise, Chirrut says, “If I said I just like the sound of your voice, will you stop doing that?” 

Baze rumbles as deep as he knows Chirrut likes it, and gathers him closer, rocking them back and forth for a few long, quiet moments.

“I’m fine. Burnt at the edges, but mostly fine. Lucky.”

Chirrut laughs where he’s pressed solid against Baze’s waist. “It wasn’t luck, you had me! And the Force, of course,” he amends quickly. Baze hugs him tight one last time and bends to kneel in front of him.

“Yeah well, I know which one I put more faith in. Let me see your leg, I found something to bind it with.” He works with swift precision, cutting away the stiff, blood-caked leg of Chirrut’s pants and wrapping the jagged tear in his thigh. Chirrut can already predict the problems it will cause if they can’t find a real surgeon. His staff will soon be his walkingstick as well as his weapon. He grimaces, but the smooth, silken glide of his bandage distracts him.

“What is that?”

“It’s some kind of sash. I took it from their king,” Baze says, his words coloured black with some vicious triumph they never used to possess. Chirrut sighs, exasperated. Baze continues, “It’s good cloth, you could use it afterwards. I think it’s nanowoven. Plus, the blood doesn’t show up.” He pats his handiwork and Chirrut reaches immediately for his face.

“It’s red?”

“It’s red. We’ll match.”

Chirrut grins so wide he knows Baze can’t help but mirror it, and confirms it when he presses a thumb to the sudden dimple. “Oh, you soft man.”

“Your soft man.”

High pitched whining is mounting on the horizon, signalling the next onslaught of dark insectoid ships. Baze cups the back of his head and they kiss for long, deep, shuddering moments, tongues licking at each other’s back teeth. A lock of Baze’s sea-salty hair comes between them and he blows it from his face with a grumble, before diving back into Chirrut’s mouth. His mane is longer than ever, and he lets Chirrut weave any flowers they find into it, but Chirrut always remembers the first, body tight and singing with love for this, for Baze. His red heart pumps red blood through his red veins for him, every moment of their days.

 

And he understands.

**Author's Note:**

> RED SORGHUM? ANYONE? RED SORGHUM??? ugh. find me on tumblr yelling about jiang wen and donnie yen as [skinks](http://skinks.tumblr.com/)


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